NEW HOLLAND — The state volleyball semifinal between Pope John Paul II and Delone Catholic on Tuesday night could literally not have been any closer. Delone took the first two sets of the best-of-5 match and PJP the next two, with each side having scored the exact same total number of points heading into the deciding fifth set.

Even that one went back and forth, but the team with more experience in such pressure-packed situations came through in the end as Delone Catholic earned a trip to this weekend’s PIAA-Class AA championship with a 3-2 (25-22, 25-14, 17-25, 19-25, 15-13) win at Garden Spot High School.

The Squires will play District 10 power Fort LeBoeuf — which defeated Mars, 3-2, in Tuesday’s other semifinal — 1 p.m. Saturday at Central York High School.

Five Golden Panthers had double-digit kill totals. Carly Giangiulio and Kelly Guarino each had 12, while Kelly Tornetta contributed 11, and both Maggie Lesinski and Tori Cruciani added 10 apiece. Kailiegh Difilippo contributed 38 digs, Guarino 33 digs and two aces, and Geena Bevenour 25 digs and 42 assists as PJP’s first experience in state play came to an end. Cambria Wierman led the Squires with 21 kills.

Advertisement

“(Delone Catholic) has played a lot of five-game matches,” said PJP coach Ryan Sell. “This is our first one.”

“Been there, done that, battle-tested,” countered Delone coach Jason Leppo, whose team won its fifth five-setter of the season. “You can’t simulate that type of intensity and emotion in practice. We had one five-set match during the regular season, then others in the county semifinals and finals, and in the district final. I guess it was only fitting that in the state semifinal we could pull it out in five.”

Unbeaten Delone (27-0) ran out to an 8-3 lead in the last set, PJP (18-1) ripped off six points in a row, and the Golden Panthers still led by a 13-11 score after a carrying call on the District 3 champion Squires. But Maddy Greth (8 kills) spiked one down for Delone, Wierman picked up her 21st kill to tie the score, the Squires took the lead on a bad return, and the Panthers hit one in from outside the antenna to end the match.

“That’s a credit to the girls not getting caught up in the moment,” said Leppo. “It did not look good a lot of points in the fifth game. (Pope John Paul) had us on the ropes.”

PJP had dug itself a hole by making too many errors in the first game — 13 of them when counting out-of-bound or into-the-net hits, service errors, and various violations. The Panthers cleaned up their game somewhat in the second set, but Wierman and Cheyenne Atland were forces on the front line as the Squires jumped to a 3-0 lead and led the rest of the way.

“Our warm-up wasn’t so great,” said Sell. “We didn’t have as much time as we usually do. In the first game we had hitting errors. In the second game we had receiving errors. You can’t give a team like that 14 or 15 points so they only have to score 10 by themselves.”

But PJP cut down on the mistakes after that, broke away from an 11-11 tie in game No. 3 with three straight points on a dink by Bevenour and two hits into the net by the Squires, and finished it off on an ace by Guarino. Then PJP broke out to a 4-1 lead in the fourth game and led by anywhere from one to six points the rest of the way — except for a 10-10 deadlock — to set up the winner-take-all fifth set to 15 points.

Allie Mondroff contibuted 10 kills and 39 assists, and libero Hannah Lawrence 31 digs for the Squires — who had won three straight sets, but only by a total of 11 points, in the quarterfinal round.

Leppo had high praise for the PJP squad.

“Their setter (Bevenour) ... she’s a special, special player,” he said. “That’s a very, very good team. It definitely showed how they were able to get to this point.”

“We had a great season,” Sell said of his Golden Panthers. “We were undefeated in regular play. We hadn’t even won districts (before) ... (tonight) we were in the Final Four. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”